ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Microbiol.
Sec. Microbe and Virus Interactions with Plants
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2025.1538998
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Strategies for Enhancing Crop Productivity and Soil Health Using PGPB and Nano-OrganicsView all 4 articles
New enlightenment on the regulatory effects of acids and phenolic compounds in wood vinegar, a by-product of biomass pyrolysis, on tomato production
Provisionally accepted
- 1College of Resources and Environment, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, China
- 2College of Plant Protection, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
- 3La Trobe University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
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Wood vinegar (WV), a biomass pyrolysis by-product, is widely used in agriculture because of the complexity and abundance of its bioactive substances. However, the specific mechanisms underlying plant growth regulation by acids and phenolic compounds, accounting for the largest proportion of their constituents, remain unclear. Therefore, the main acids (N-ethylglycine, Lactic, and 2-pyridinecarboxylic acids) and phenols (Catechol and Guaiacol) were selected to understand their effects on soil properties, microbial communities, and tomato growth in a pot experiment. Resultsshowed that individual applications of acids and phenolics significantly enhanced nutrient availability (e.g., soil AP, AK, and AN), promoted tomato growth (e.g., PH, SD, AB), and regulated endogenous hormone levels (upregulating auxin (IAA), gibberellin (GA₃), and cytokinin (CTK); downregulating abscisic acid (ABA). Among them, N-ethylglycine and catechol exhibited the most pronounced effects. However, their mixture (acid-phenolic combination) attenuated growth-promoting effects and hormonal regulation, accompanied by reduced bacterial community richness (ACE and Chao indices) and operational taxonomic units (OTUs) compared to single treatments. The dominant bacteria in the treatments with N-ethylglycine, Catechol, and their combination were Pedobacter, Pseudoxanthomonas , and TM7a, respectively, whereas the dominant fungi were Olpidiaster, Borealophlyctis, and Spizellomyces, respectively. Network-based analysis showed that Pseudoxanthomonas was negatively correlated with Pedobacter, and Olpidiaster was positively correlated with Spizellomyces. These findings deepened our understanding of the effects of acids and phenolics in WV on endogenous hormone levels, soil chemical characteristics, microbial diversity, and metabolic processes in tomato, and revealed the mechanisms of regulatory effects of WV components on crop growth.
Keywords: Wood vinegar, Acids, Phenols, soil properties, Microbial environment, regulatory effects
Received: 03 Dec 2024; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhou, Zhang, Mu, Gao, Bao and Tang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Naiming Zhang, College of Resources and Environment, Yunnan Agricultural University, Kunming, China
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